Once a year we head to Ft. Worth for the NCHA Futurity. This year we had an extra traveler… Tbug got to go with us for the first time. She was given the option of going to Mermet Springs or Ft. Worth and she chose Ft. Worth this year. The plans were to head out first thing Thursday morning.
Some days I get a mean bone in my body… lol. Well… I use the word mean loosely though! Let me explain. First off, did anyone notice I hadn’t been around these parts basically in over a week minus one post? Last week was finals week and then we headed to Ft. Worth for the weekend. After I turned in all my papers on Wednesday night, I didn’t touch a computer for 4 whole days because I was tired of my computer!
So anyway… I mentioned we went to Ft. Worth for the NCHA Futurity. Saturday night after the Open finals, we went to grab a bite to eat and wound up at Pappadeauxs. We ate there for the first time last year and it was good. So this year hubs wanted to go again.
He’s gotten in the habit of asking the waiter what’s the best thing on the menu when trying to decide what to order. I typically don’t eat fish, don’t care for the taste, but there wasn’t much chicken on the menu other than chicken strips. One of the things the waiter suggested was the shrimp. I decided to go for it.
These were huge shrimp stuffed with Monterey Jack cheese and a sliver of jalapeño wrapped in bacon and chargrilled. I’ll do shrimp as long as they don’t taste shrimpy/fishy! These, these were good! Then I went with a loaded baked potato for the side (instead of dirty rice).
62/365 – Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! We love you!
63/365 – The other day our neighbors cows thought it would be fun to romp through our field. Turns out it wasn’t the neighbors cows I thought they were because I heard the neighbor on the other side screaming when they were putting the cows back in.
64/365 – I love beautiful sunsets! Probably cause I’m not a morning person so I don’t see sunrises nearly as often
Last Tuesday of the month, first Tuesday of the month, at this point same difference right? Wow, where did November go? Seriously… time is spiraling fast out of control. At least we made it through Thanksgiving so we don’t have to hear people say… Don’t forget about the Turkey before Santa! oy!
There were a lot of good times in November to be thankful about and smile about so let’s get to it…
1. Hubby’s birthday. It’s November 1st. That’s definitely a good reason to smile right off the bat in November, right?
2. Both my girls love to ride horses. They also both rode Blonde Barbie (my mare) for the first time on hubby’s birthday. (This is Aloha in the picture, not Blonde Barbie :))
Some days I think we need our sanity checked! Yesterday was one of those days! The alarm went off at 4:30am. Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t worry, I didn’t get out of bed until 5. And that was funny in itself because I asked hubs what time it was and he said, “I know you are but you need to get up.” He thought I said I was tired….
Yesterday was a home Chiefs game.
Another fun story, the night before Grady called and asked if we knew anyone that would like to go to a Chiefs game because they had an extra ticket. We called Memaw and asked her if she’d like to go to a Chiefs game. She said, Well I’ve never been to a baseball game so it sounds like fun. We all died laughing and said, well after tomorrow (meaning yesterday) you still won’t have gone to a baseball game. She meant to say football and accidentally said baseball. We teased her all day. Woops!
Anyway, back to yesterday morning… This is what a lot of our drive looked like. And once it started lighting up… it started raining. And boy was it ever so cold!
We rode up with Jared and met up with the other clan at IHOP in Belton, then piled in to their vehicles and headed on to the Chief’s stadium. Jared was picking on SW. Either that, or it was snowing in IHOP
And as we all know I take pictures of food… Jared ordered this… Chicken fried steak, eggs over easy and hashbrowns.
If there’s one thing that hubby and I have come to love to do, it’s preparing a Thanksgiving turkey. Obviously if we go somewhere, that’s great too, but when we get the opportunity, we jump on it.
This year was one of those years. So a couple weeks before Thanksgiving we made out our menu, planned out our plan of execution, made out the shopping list, and cleaned house. Cleaning house included rearranging some too… we invited 16 people to our humble little abode so we needed to make sure we had room to set up tables. Easy Peasy! Yup, Abug was helping daddy move the old desk out of the living room :).
We were able to get Tbug on Tuesday night. Tuesday afternoon Abug and I started working on one of the desserts, a recipe that my aunt makes when we go to her house. This cake is awesome! Chocolate, chocolate ganache, a praline topping, what more could you ask for? Oh yeah, there were like 6 other options for Thanksgiving…. (and ignore my fashion sense, remember, there’s a reason I’m not a fashion blogger!)
Can you believe we’re at Thanksgiving week? Didn’t we just ring in the New Year? This year has flown by. In the last couple days I have been putting together a document on Christmases and as we’re approaching my favorite time of the year, between Thanksgiving and New Years, I’ve been a scrooge the last 3 or 4 years at Christmas time. How the heck does that happen? I wish I had an answer but I don’t. Maybe this year will be better? Here’s to hoping!
My mom laughs at hubby and me because we write our Thanksgiving game plan out with courses, how long they cook, at what temperature they cook and even when we need to start working on them to get them in the oven at the correct time.
One of the recipes we’re making this year is a Tennessee Whiskey Cake with Candied Pecans. Hubby was going to buy some candied pecans, but I told him I would find a recipe and make my own so that’s just what I did yesterday… made my own candied pecans. Can I tell you how easy they were because wow, they were! The hardest part was I accidentally dropped my egg yolk into the egg white I was separating out and broke it while I was at it. Bummer!
That just meant I had to start over. Seriously, separating the egg white from the egg yolk is the hardest part of this recipe.
You drop the white into a mixer (or do it by hand, I was being lazy), bring to a frothy white, add brown sugar, fold in the Pecans, spread on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in a 175˚ oven for an hour and a half. And…. then you have Candied Pecans.
